Digital high-definition broadcasting is starting, and it becomes possible to enjoy more impressive images of higher qualities than conventional ones at home along with the prevalence of high-definition television receivers (to be also simply referred to as television sets hereinafter). As electronic still cameras become popular, many users display electronic still and moving images on the monitors of personal computers and television sets and enjoy the displayed images.
In this situation, there are increasing user demands to not only display photographed still and moving images on television sets, but also “passively” view such images like television programs or enjoy them with presentations and audio/video effects like television programs and movies.
A slide show display is a method of sequentially displaying digital image data without any user operation. As a method of adding an effect to a slide show display, there are proposed a method of controlling a display switching effect in accordance with the settings of the display switching effect added in advance to distributed still images, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-281450, and a method of allowing the user to freely change the display switching effect to another one.
However, the technique proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-281450 requires work by the contents creator to add a display effect in order to add a high display effect to a slide show. In addition, the user can only exchange a still image switching effect control instruction with another switching effect control instruction. That is, according to the conventional technique, it is difficult to automatically or easily add a display effect appropriate for the contents of each photograph.